My ninth Alafair Tucker mystery, The Return of the Raven Mocker , was just released in paper and as an e-book on January 3. And yet I’m already working on book ten. When I first began writing the Alafair Tucker Mystery series, I had a story arc in mind that was going to carry through ten books. This is a wonderful idea, but as anyone who has ever written a long series knows, after a couple of books all your plans for a story arc have gone by the wayside. The reason this happened, at least to me, is that I seem to be writing about real people who have their own ideas about how things should be gone about, and once I put them into a situation, they react to it in ways I had never anticipated. So much for a ten-book arc. Besides, I really want readers to be able to pick up any book in the series and have a satisfying experience without having to know anything about what went before. This poses the million dollar question for the author of a long series: How do you keep it fresh? Ho...

Recently, Jinx Schwartz and Polly Iyer shared their experiences as authors using free e-books through Amazon's KDP Select program. (Click on their names to read those posts.) About a year ago, the BBT Cafe authors put together a short story collection, The Corner Cafe , as an author sampler and to test Amazon's KDPS free days. As a result of that project, I've watched other authors and publishers implement their assorted approaches to this marketing method. I'm signed up for three e-letters hawking free and inexpensive Kindle books, and review them daily, and also occasionally use NetGalley . Here are some thoughts (based largely from a reader and reviewer perspective) on how I view the free e-book marketing tactic and its evolution: 1. Giveaways and samplers work as well as they have since the idea was first conceived (which historically probably goes way back). If the product is good, the experience pleasant, and the customer has a reason to come back and sp...

In January of 2012, after two years represented by an agent, I self-published three mystery/thrillers on Amazon’s KDP Select program. That month, I sold 38 books for a grand total of $82, one in the UK. Wow, I was an international seller. That meant 39 people besides friends and critique partners read my books. Since then, I’ve sold many more. A few free days during the first part of the year garnered enough reviews for the promo sites to feature me, a key in selling. The biggest free promo site then and now is EReader News Today . In July, 2012, they featured Murder Déjà Vu , and that’s when everything changed. The book totaled 37,000 downloads and sold, with borrows, 1800 units. Mind Games got a bump because the first chapter is at the end of MDV. In August, Hooked earned the reviews for an ENT feature. Results: 44,200 downloads, and it sold, are you ready, 3500 books/borrows. Murder Déjà vu continued selling with over 1100 copies sold. It was the best month ever. I ...

Thanks for hosting me today, Dani. I'd like to share with you today my FREE day results over the past year, but first here's how I got there: Wrote some books, self-published them, got picked up by a small publishing house, then decided to go indie. Simple, huh? Not so much. Back before Kindle Direct Publishing and Createspace , self-pubbing wasn't all that easy. Sure you ended up with a book to show off, but without good distribution and a publisher to help successfully hawk your wares (thus the split with my publisher) all you end up with is a closet full of books you lug around to book signings. But then a miracle occurred: Kindle Direct Publishing Select, and with it a chance to get your books out there. Of course by now I had re-re-re-edited my books into what many consider a good read, so that helps. No matter how much you spend on publicity, or how much social media you ascribe to, if you don't have a well-written and edited book to offer your read...

When I was a kid... oh, boy, here we go. But seriously, most of us remember reading stories in school by O. Henry , Guy de Maupassant , and Edgar Allan Poe .  The short story was part of my literary education from grade school through college. Later, I read short stories in magazines like the Ladies Home Journal , and regular contributor, Rosamunde Pilcher, is still one of my favorite authors. But as I grew older, novels became my entertainment of choice, and it wasn't until I got my Nook last year that I rediscovered the short story. E-books have changed reading habits for gazillions of people. Not only are we able to buy books in the blink of an eye, we can carry small libraries with us wherever we go. It's particularly convenient if one does a lot of research,and these gadgets are so smart, we can even make notes right in the books! But even better than that, we can sample lots of writing because many authors are using the short story format to introduce readers to their...